


Yet Each Man

by The_Last_Kenobi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Child Death, Depictions of Death, Gen, I keep picking on poor Obi-Wan, I like to write AUs that make canon even more sad, I took canon and I made it worse, Jedi Temple Siege, Order 66, Tragedy, mild violence, nothing too graphic but it is genocide, that is what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25503118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Last_Kenobi/pseuds/The_Last_Kenobi
Summary: /Yet each man kills the thing he lovesBy each let this be heard,Some do it with a bitter look,Some with a flattering word,The coward does it with a kiss,The brave man with a sword!/-The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar WildeObi-Wan Kenobi kills General Grievous very quickly indeed.He's not on Utapau when Order 66 is issued.He's on the bridge, standing shoulder to shoulder with Cody, and thinking of home.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 32
Kudos: 183





	Yet Each Man

Slaying Grievous had been…anticlimactic.

Obi-Wan had found him in plain sight, descending the ramp from his ship, having just landed on Utapau.

Cody had sighed, knowing there was nothing he could do to prevent his General from executing something foolish and effective—and he had. Obi-Wan had launched himself out of their own hovering ship, used the Force to slam heavily onto the side of the cliff-face, and then flipped backwards and fallen neatly on top of Grievous.

The cyborg hadn’t even had time to withdraw his sabers before a bright blue saber pierced him directly through his remaining organs. Once, twice—Grievous fell.

Obi-Wan talked briefly with the natives and then departed.

Count Dooku was dead at Anakin’s hand.

Grievous had perished at his.

It was time for the Team to reunite, time for the war to end. Mere weeks ago, strategy droids and Republic analysists had pegged the chances of a Republic victory at between 30 and 40%. Now the tide had turned dramatically. The Separatists had been falling apart internally ever since the peace talks were fatally ended the previous year; now they were down their two highest commanders. And if there was someone in the shadows helping them, as the Council suspected—they would draw them out into the Light.

Or at least hold them at bay long enough to get the galaxy in democratic and economic order once again.

“Well done, General,” Cody said, removing his bucket with a wry smile.

“I think perhaps,” said the High Jedi General of the Third Systems Army, “you had better get used to calling me Obi-Wan. Master Kenobi at the very least.”  
  


Cody grimaced. Peel laughed.

* * *

They were halfway home when it happened.

A disturbance in the Force, the likes of which Obi-Wan had never felt before in his life.

Like a wave, emanating from somewhere just out of sight, at first a subtle thing and then a roaring tidal wave that erupted outwards with concussive strength—carrying screams with it as it went—and then, terrifyingly—

The Force signatures of his men, every single one, suddenly went out.

No…not out. Crushed. Squeezed. Caught in a _stranglehold_ , suffocated by the torrent; their lights dimmed and shrunk to almost nothing.

All of this happened in a single moment, and in the next General Kenobi was leaping backwards high into the air, watching as if in slow motion as every single trooper on the bridge of the _Negotiator_ turned and leveled their blasters to where he had been standing a moment before.

Commander Cody, who had been by his shoulder reviewing incoming reports on a datapad, turned his head and watched as Obi-Wan flipped in mid-air, leveraging the Force to extend his arc—Cody was one of the few not currently wearing his bucket, and as Obi-Wan felt gravity beginning to press on him again, Cody’s dark eyes locked directly on his.

There was nothing there.

Just nothing.

Not the wry, steady good faith he had come to know and to trust, nor the shocked disapproval he occasionally garnered with high-risk maneuvers.

Not even the baleful bitterness he had once—a million years ago—seen shining in the identical eyes of Jango Fett.

Cody’s eyes were empty.

Time seemed to lurch back to normal speed.

The Jedi Master was now standing on the entry platform, staring down at the bridge. Outside the transperitsteel, the familiar blur of blue and white light indicated that they were still travelling at lightspeed towards Coruscant; the men were all still at their stations, no alarms were blaring.

And yet the Force was _screaming_ in his ears, danger danger danger run—

—all the blasters were aiming at him again as the troopers found his new location. Cody glanced away briefly to look at something Obi-Wan had not noticed before—a holo-projector clutched in one gloved hand, still projecting a faint blue image of a hooded figure. With a press of a button it was gone, and Cody looked back up at his General with those blank eyes and said, “Don’t let him escape.”

Some part of Obi-Wan that wanted desperately to ignore all the facts, ignore the past five seconds, went icy cold.

He barely had time to duck before the first bolts whizzed over him.

Troopers remained down on the bridge, firing up at him steadily, but the ones nearest to the two sets of stairs began advancing rapidly, also firing without hesitation.

Obi-Wan slammed a hand onto the control panel of the door without looking, igniting his blue lightsaber with his other hand, already deflecting blaster bolts with dizzying speed. Only three solid years of combat experience against overwhelming numbers preserved him through his very un-Master-like shock and confusion and the ache-ache-ache that was stabbing his chest in rhythm with the beat-beat-beat of his heart.

He stepped backwards through the door and used the Force to slam it shut on the Clones, catching Cody’s next barked command: “He’s exiting the bridge! I’m overriding the control panels; corner him!”

His voice was strange and flat.

There was no malice in it. There was no malice or betrayal or anger in the Force, either—no real warning, no emotion—just a blaring alarm of danger and that strange suffocating feeling—the pulsing, screeching wrongness in the Force was accompanied by Obi-Wan’s own internal panic and the external sound of heavy boots from all directions.

Something slammed against the door.

He had sealed it with the Force, but they would be able to break it open as soon as he left.

Obi-Wan turned on his heel and ran.

A squad of ten troopers charged around the corner and towards him without hesitating. Four ran forward. The others hung back at intervals.  
All of them opened fire.

Obi-Wan leapt through the air again, saber spinning, and for a few seconds all was a blur of speed and blue light and red light and the screaming inside his head; he landed behind the squad and kept running, lashing out a hand behind him to throw the troopers down the hallway.

More were coming.

And where would he even go from here? Cody had surely carried through on his intention to lock him out of the system—all closed doors and escape pods would no longer be accessible to him. There was always the hangar bay—he could steal a starfighter and blast his way out of the doors, which were unshielded from the inside—but that was several levels below him.

There was no way he could make it down there without being killed.

They were trying to kill him.

His troops—his men—his allies, friends—they were actively seeking to kill him in cold blood, no hesitation, no possibility of capture. There was a coldness in the Force. It writhed and screamed and it was very, very hard for him to think or act or seek comfort when his one constant was suddenly _wrong_ —

But High Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi is too well-trained, too good at his job.

His plans and his body kept moving even as the rest of him felt cold and weightless and tingly, like the shock of missing a step coming down the stairs and that terrifying split second where everything solid is suddenly gone and balance is gone and there’s no place to put the next step, just empty air—

Obi-Wan leaped into a ventilation shaft and started crawling as quickly and as silently as he could.

_He can’t make it to the hangar._

Even if he could, there’s no way he wouldn’t be forced to kill—no.

He can’t make it to the hangar.

The control panels were closed to him, now, but if he could clear space around a pod launching dock long enough to burst through the door with brute force and the heat of a lightsaber, he could make it. The control panels to the escape pods could be locked down; the control panels and engines of the pods themselves were a different matter. A safety measure in case the bridge was ever taken or the controls went haywire—if one could enter an escape pod, one could always launch it.

The Master descended two levels down to a hall carrying eight escape pods. It was not the one closest to the bridge—that seemed too risky—and perhaps that had been the correct decision, because when he peered through the slats of the vent cover he could see no Clones.

Without pausing he removed the cover and dropped to the floor silent as a shadow.

There were boots thundering above, below, beside the hallway. They were coming for him.

The _Negotiator_ shifted tellingly. They had dropped out of lightspeed. Coruscant.

Obi-Wan ignited his saber again and began carving a hole in the nearest door. It was slower work than he was comfortable with—he felt like slamming a fist against the wall in frustration but he forced himself to grip his saber with two hands and slowly, slowly—a sloppy oval carved in the muted red of overheated metal.

A single Force-enhanced kick had it loosened; a wave of his hand removed it and sent it flying down the corridor, directly into the oncoming squad of troopers.

“The Jedi is here!” one of them yelled in that same flat tone as Cody. “Here!”

“Stop him!”

Obi-Wan flung open the smaller door of the ship and then slammed it behind him, barely dodging a blaster bolt that left a scorch mark across his brown boot. With a few quick taps he primed the engine and entered a destination, with a slam of a button the escape pod was released and the panel into open space fell aside.

Obi-Wan looked up through the viewport one last time.

Through the double-glazed window he could see the receding outline of the door he had carved a hole in. Two troopers were crouched in the opening, firing on the escape pod, but the light shielding was enough to stop the assault.

Through the window of that same door, a single Clone was framed in the bright artificial light, staring directly at Obi-Wan. He was wearing his helmet, but the Jedi knew it was Trapper. He always knew his men.

Trapper gazed at the escaping General without moving; the escape pod lurched a little as it broke through the _Negotiator’s_ shield range and the engine kicked into full gear.

Escape pods could travel for up to two ten-days, sometimes longer if the pilot knows how to conserve energy. They could drift in space for up to a month if all the power is focused on life support and not movement.

But that wasn’t a problem for Obi-Wan, because he had been correct in his assumption earlier—his ship was hovering high above the silver curve of Coruscant, rapidly descending towards the planet’s atmosphere. He gripped the control panel and watched as his pod, fast enough and small enough to escape the _Negotiator’s_ threatening bulk, flew towards the Jedi Temple.

* * *

His home was burning.

He stepped out of the escape pod and began walking towards the Temple as quickly as he could, his robe wrapped around him in a flimsy excuse for shelter and the hood drawn high.

There were thousands of troopers marching into the Temple, never slowing, never ceasing, aided by fighters swarming the airspace, raining hell down around the entire perimeter. All the exterior gardens were aflame.

No survivors seemed to be fleeing.

Even if they had, they would only run into fire and the ever-incoming army marching to a tune only they could hear, a great drop of the guillotine.

Who had cut the rope, and why? And _how_? The Clones had been their allies, their soldiers…their friends. Powerfully unique and individual in the Force, just like anyone else, and therefore capable of choosing where their loyalties lay, of developing personal senses of humor, of possessing varying strengths and abilities and weaknesses, and now—

It was like watching puppets on a single string.

Their Generals meant nothing to them.

And it was obvious that it was not only Kenobi’s men who were broken in the Force, broken—compressed—

He saw yellow armor and black armor and blue armor and plain white armor—

Kenobi’s 212th. Windu’s Unit. Skywalker’s 501st. And the Coruscant Guard.

The boot under which the Jedi Order was being crushed.

* * *

Obi-Wan fought back to back with two Masters, three Knights, and a Padawan. He only vaguely recognized any of them—by name. In every other way they were still family, his brothers, sisters; he saw himself in the weary, sweat-glazed brow of a Master, the flashes of dismay and pain in the eyes of a Knight, the pale trembling of the Padawan Learner’s lips.

There were troopers everywhere. On every level.

In the enormous, millennia-old grand lobby, made of polished marble from veins of mountains long since worn away, there were balconies rising twenty-three floors high. Every Jedi trapped in that room, trying desperately to hold a line that had been scattered as soon as it had formed, was taking fire from every angle imaginable except for from below.

Blaster bolts fell like burning hail.

There was no holding it at bay, not forever.

The Padawan fell.

His Master clutched his head, the _pain_ of the torn bond rippling out in the Force, adding to the chaos, even as the death of the youth tore yet another hole in the fabric of the world—the Master fell.

One of the Knights crashed to his knees with a hole in his leg and kept swinging.

Obi-Wan was the Master of Soresu.

Not a Master of Soresu.

 _The_ Master.

Not a title he often talked about (never talked about.) Not something he bothered to think about, except when wide-eyed initiates and Padawans watched him with awe in their small faces—and yet not even he was capable of defending himself forever. Much less the people around him—his family—and from his men, his men—

The other two Knights fell dead. The remaining Master closed ranks with Kenobi and the kneeling knight, but there was simply no hope.

They were tired. They did not want to kill these soldiers in the first place.

They were all going to die.

A child screamed, quickly echoed by several more children and then a young woman screaming— “Stay behind me! Stay down!”

Obi-Wan turned his head and spotted a group of younglings, herded into the most dangerous area of the battle by a squad of Clones, guarded only by a Padawan he recognized. That was Cin Drallig’s apprentice, Bene, a young woman with a talent for saberwork and a constant half-smile on her lips. She couldn’t be older than fifteen.

She was fighting like a Knight. Her blue blade, paler than most, was moving so quickly it was hard to track even with the keen sight of a Jedi Master.

But Bene alone would not be enough.

The injured Knight looked over his shoulder up at the copper-haired General and said, “Go.”

Leaving the unnamed Master and Knight to die, Obi-Wan did, tearing through the room with a wordless shout, landing on the other side of the little group. Bene glanced at him and kept swinging. “Padawan, we’re taking them deeper into the Temple! Head towards the West wing—it’s mostly been laid to waste but there are less troops there!”

“Yes, Master!” Bene did not ask where they would go from there.

There was no answer to that question. They both knew it.

Obi-Wan and Bene swiftly edged around the group of younglings, swapping places, Master Kenobi taking the position facing the lobby, and the Padawan taking the lead to flee deeper into the trap. There was no out. Only a miracle could save them now.

Obi-Wan had been asking for one ever since that moment on the bridge. Thus far he had found only death.

* * *

His arms felt like lead. Never, never had he fought this long. Not on Umbara, not at Point Rain, not against droids or Sith had Obi-Wan ever had to fight so constantly for so long.

And—every time a trooper fell—

It felt like a failure, not an achievement. As if he had allowed the enemy to strike down one of his own, instead of what it now was: stopping a foe from murdering his people.

Genocide, something whispered inside his head. It was tired and thin and it sounded like Obi-Wan Kenobi as he had been at age twelve when he was the most unwanted child in the Jedi Order. This is genocide. I have only ever had two families, when I was never supposed to have one. The Jedi Order, and the Clone troopers. Neither one of them would survive the day.

Yellow armor. Black armor. Blue armor. White armor.

And a phrase.

Repeated over and over.

Sometimes as a response to an order from a commanding officer, sometimes simply chanted out as they leveled a blaster at their former allies, sometimes in response to a despairing scream or a plea for mercy, for why, from a Jedi about to die—

_“Good soldiers follow orders.”_

Obi-Wan backed down a corridor, shedding his cloak and ignoring the blaster burn that ran from his left wrist to his elbow; his saber was the color of a spring sky on a green world, on Naboo, and it carved a wall of light around him as he moved further into the Temple.

If their troops were here, then so were General Windu and General Skywalker.

He would find them.

And if they had fallen—

He would fall beside them.

* * *

There were younglings in the Council Chamber.

All of them were dead.

They had come there for safety, for security, daring to enter one of the few rooms in the Temple that was never open to them without an invitation and the steadying hand of a crechemaster on their small shoulders, they had run here hoping for someone to protect them.

And they were covered in fatal lightsaber scars.

Burning—through their tiny tunics, dark against different shades of skin, a dozen different species, all of them under the age of ten—the smallest was a little Twi’lek girl that Obi-Wan knew had only been Searched out and brought to the Temple a year ago—she was only three—she was dead, they were all dead—somewhere else in the Temple, a brave girl named Bene was also surely dead and her small companions also, their little brothers and sisters not spared from the monotonous slaughter—

_“Good soldiers follow orders.”_

Obi-Wan gently closed the tiny Twi’lek’s eyes with trembling fingers.

He could not scream, but he wanted to.

Inside his head, his emotions howled and clawed at his shields; outside, the rolling, writhing, merciless wailing of the Force beat against the shields from the other side.

He should have been here earlier. He should have defended these younglings.

He ought to have stopped whatever this was before it happened.

Something was wrong, and he felt that it had been wrong for a very long time.

“Good soldiers follow orders.”

There was a Clone in the doorway. Obi-Wan walked towards him in no particular hurry and buried his lightsaber in the man’s heart without stopping. He yanked it out of the body and stepped over it and back out into the hallway, feeling the Force shake with death and the walls shake with explosions and his hands shake with despair.

There was no help for it.

If he wanted to find any living Jedi, if he wanted to find Anakin, Mace, Yoda, anyone—

Obi-Wan opened his shields just a little.

_Pain._

_Wailing._

_Writhing._

_Stillness._

_Death._

_Darkness._

_Conflict._

_Choices._

_Death death **death** death death good soldiers follow **orders** dimmed lights in the Force the stranglehold of the soul of a **million** souls fire on the ground and fire in the air and children **dying** and somewhere a woman was crying all alone except not alone, accompanied by twin stars, and _

Obi-Wan found himself standing in a meditation room.

There were no corpses here, but through the window he could see the Senate dome, and across the gap of time and space he could see, an hour ago, right now, Mace Windu howling in agony as lightning rushed through his entire body and his hand was severed from his arm—Mace was thrown with great force out into open air—

He was gone.

He had been gone for hours.

And _Anakin_ —

Obi-Wan could not sense him at all. He felt his former Padawan’s panic, fear, gut-churning guilt, a wave of rage and helplessness, and then—nothing.

The bond had been torn asunder and Obi-Wan had not felt it because he had been shielding himself like a _coward_.

Anakin was dead and he hadn’t even felt it.

General Kenobi—former General, former Councilor, former Jedi Master perhaps, if this was truly their last stand—turned on his heel one more time and pushed through the haze of his splitting skull and burning flesh and broken heart.

He was still alive.

And as long as that remained true, he would remain who he was.

The Jedi that Qui-Gon Jinn had raised, albeit reluctantly.

The Jedi that had raised Anakin Skywalker, crossing the line of attachment in a new way.

The Jedi who had loved a pacifist, the impossible Mandalorian who had somehow loved him too.

The Jedi who had let Ahsoka Tano go, because she needed to.

There were almost eleven thousand Jedi alive when the day had begun.

Now, with his mind broken open to the Force as it was in this moment, he could sense less than three hundred alive across the entire galaxy.

Even as he walked, he felt more lives go out like candles pinched between careless fingers. A young Padawan with blonde hair charged past him, running out onto a docking platform. Looking out into the night, he saw Bail Organa standing at the end, surrounded by aggressive Clones. They were not shooting him—threatening to, but there was no automatic execution, not like there was with the Jedi—

Obi-Wan had his saber lit and was running once again before he realized it. The apprentice was ahead of him, nimbly employing Djem So and Ataru to cut down the troopers in his way.

Bail was watching the boy with wide, dark eyes—they looked up at the sight of new movement and another lightsaber and his mouth opened in surprise and relief—

Obi-Wan used the Force to shove three Clones off the platform, and the Padawan took down the last one with a violent swing.

Silence.

“Go,” Obi-Wan said. There was no gentle urgency in his voice, the mark of the Councilor; no firm command, the tone of the High General; there was just…he was just verbalizing the obvious. Bail and the Padawan could not stay. Obi-Wan could not leave. Bail stepped forward, his face falling, but checked himself.

“Obi-Wan—”

No title. No doubt Bail meant it as a sign of affection—friendship, admiration. What it sounded like was a reminder that there was no Jedi Order to be a Master of any longer.

“Find Padmé Amidala,” Obi-Wan said quietly. His saber hung loosely by his side, humming sadly. “She was Anakin Skywalker’s wife. She will not survive this if you do not find her.”

The Senator’s expression shifted rapidly from pain to surprise to a gentle resignation, and he held out his arms unconsciously, sheltering the exhausted Padawan in them. The boy looked surprised, but not offended. He hid his face in the sweeping Senatorial robes and powered off his saber with a sigh.

Bail held Obi-Wan’s gaze. And nodded.

* * *

They were the last ones left.

It was Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padawan Whie Malreaux, Padawan Voxe Ka’al, Knight Aleya Graee, and Master Yoda.

Just five Jedi left alive in the Temple.

Perhaps, Obi-Wan thought indulgently as he moved his shaking, agonized limbs through the motions he knew so well, blinded by the light of his saber and the painful wetness in his oceanic eyes, perhaps some had escaped in time. Perhaps a Knight had covered themselves in shadow and escaped with a youngling in their arms; maybe a Master had fled at the right moment to fight another day.

But in the end it was just five Jedi dancing through deadly motions, in the same room but only just in sight of one another, glimpses between blaster bolts and swinging lightsabers. Verdant green, sky blue, pale yellow, deep amber, and a small lightstaff of deep indigo.

Then there were four Jedi.

Then three.

And finally, it was just Yoda and Obi-Wan, standing alone in the face of well over two hundred helmeted Clone troopers, all of them taking aim at the same time—

Yoda closed his eyes and reached into the Force.

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and dreamt of his friends dispersed into the greater Force, and of Bail Organa and a small Padawan holding a sobbing Padmé.

He closed his eyes, and so he did not see what happened.

_He opened his eyes._

Yoda was on the floor, stirring feebly, painfully. His lightsaber had rolled away and was picked up by a faceless soldier, who extinguished it at once.

And Obi-Wan—

Found himself staring at a familiar face with an unfamiliar expression and strange, oozing-gold eyes just inches from his own.

Anakin Skywalker pressed a gloved hand to his best friend’s cheek and gazed into his eyes; the older Jedi stared back, hypnotized and bewildered.

The Clones had lowered their weapons and were merely watching.

Anakin flicked his free hand carelessly, and as one, all two hundred and thirty-eight soldiers fired on the kneeling Grandmaster. Yoda vanished behind a maelstrom of blaster bolts, and the hole that was torn in the Force caused both Obi-Wan and Anakin to gasp—but the former’s face fell in horror, and the latter’s lips twisted in a faint facsimile of a smile.

 _Oh_.

Obi-Wan was staring his final, most terrible failures directly in their molten eyes.

Anakin had not fallen.

He had Fallen.

And Obi-Wan could not keep his vow to fall beside him; he could not Fall in the same way. They would not be side by side just as they had sworn silently and individually inside their heads all those years ago when they first faced peril together as Master and Padawan, as best friends, as brothers. He tried to find words, and found none, not even a plea, not even a question, not even a name. Nothing. He had failed, and could not see a way to apologize.

Anakin—if that was this creature’s name, still—seemed to understand this.

But instead of the bitter, resentful scowl that he usually gave the man who had disappointed him over and over again, he smiled that strange half-smile again and pressed a brotherly kiss to the older man’s forehead. One arm came around the Master in an almost-embrace, holding him close, both of them almost nose to nose. The other arm moved more slowly, rising…

A blue saber ignited, and Obi-Wan felt the heat of it searing through his chest, directly through his heart, even as he stared into this newborn monster’s eyes—

—and found that the misery of dying by fire was much less painful than the _coldness_ that enveloped him when Anakin Skywalker let go of Obi-Wan Kenobi and let him fall to the floor, unsupported and utterly alone, surrounded by unfamiliar, unfeeling eyes.

He was dead before he hit the ground, which was a mercy, in the end.

There was not enough time for him to understand that there was no one there to catch him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry


End file.
